Editor's note: This column is part of a joint series by Points and Al Dia offering parents advice to get and keep their children on the road to academic success. Click here for the full project.

As summer cools to a close, calling it the end of a break can be chuckle-inducing for parents and caregivers — those three months with kids home are indeed work. Now that it's schooltime again, parents shift their thoughts to supporting their child for the most successful year possible. This sometimes entails reading with young children, being vigilant with them on homework assignments and partnering with educators to ensure their actions at school are consistent with your expectations at home. These are typical components to a strong framework of a good school year.

But the world is changing rapidly.

We are in a technological renaissance with increasing automation, exponentially progressing artificial intelligence, and industry-reforming machine learning. The life that our children will know as adults will be barely recognizable to us today.

Consider that teenagers who get their driver's licenses this year probably remember a time before iPhones and Facebook changed the world. And those new drivers will soon have to consider whether the cars on the road next to them are being driven by humans or machines. The rate of pivotal change surpasses our abilities to predict what opportunities our children will know.

So how do you work alongside your child's formal education to shape a person who can thrive in a 21st century world? We as parents have a duty to prepare our children for the world to come instead of the world that's been.

As daunting as this may seem, there are ways for parents to support their children and empower them with the core constitution to thrive.

Nurture creativity. The careers most at risk of disappearing due to automation and artificial intelligence are tasks that are process oriented, predictable or repetitive. The job fields queued to grow are those that require genuine creativity and problem solving.

From left: Mason Cashion, 10; Caden Jones, 11; Josh Andrews, 10, and Ryan Chappotin, 11, all from Hajek Elementary in Burleson, compete in the 10th annual North Texas First LEGO League Championship Robotics Tournament at Parish Episcopal School in Farmers Branch. Extracurricular programs that encourage inventiveness, especially with regard to technology, are one way to prepare kids for a rapidly changing future.

(Andy Jacobsohn/Staff Photographer)

Creativity is inherent to all humans, and nurturing it requires the counterintuition of staying out of its way. Yes, parents must encourage excellence, setting a standard of giving sincere effort, but raising the creative child couples an emphasis on effort with an encouragement to find the joy in work.

The adult in young creatives' lives assumes the role of facilitator as opposed to drill sergeant. Pay close attention to your child and ask the right questions. Instead of the generic, "How was school?" start the habit of asking more specific but open-ended questions, "What's the best thing that happened at school today?" Ask follow-ups. Dig deeper. With a simple shift in this inquiry, you can invite your child to discover the things that light him or her up.

As these interests start to reveal themselves, create space for the child to explore them. By connecting with the school to identify which after-school programs, clubs, or extracurricular activities provide experiences in the arts, science, technology, and service-project-based learning, students build the muscle-memory of creating. The synapses in the brain fire best when your child is engaged in pursuits that interest him or her and push the child to build.

Lastly, create an environment that embraces risk. When you routinely encourage children to press beyond their perceived limits, you normalize productive discomfort. You create a safe space when you affirm pursuit of a new experience and when they fail, you frame the lesson as part of the growth process. This skill set creates the necessary frontier mentality that drives a creative mind to places unventured.

In a workforce where the federal Department of Labor predicts 65 percent of youth today will be employed in jobs that don't yet exist, the path toward a fulfilling quality of life is through the capacity to creatively problem solve in a future we cannot even imagine. Shaping our children's ability to step into this dynamically evolving ecosystem, this createconomy, is more than just a recommendation — it's a responsibility.

Byron Sanders is chief executive of Big Thought in Dallas. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.